All the eggs have hatched 

The last two eggs for 2008 have hatched - "Jester", the second of Cyndy’s eggs hatched on April Fools Day; and "Weheruatanga-o-te-pō"  (Pō for short) which means midnight, hatched on Thursday – at midnight.

Both are doing well and bring the total number of chicks to 7.

Although all the birds will get official names when they are grown up and green they have nicknames at the moment; this makes our life easier as they get talked about around a million times a day!  Some of our favorites are "Toitoiiti" which means tiny; she hatched at 18.83gms making her the smallest kakapo ever and about the same weight as two and a half Bic biros; but today she weighs 125.2gms; and Mokopuna who is the first grand-chick since kakapo management began and also the grand-chick of recently deceased Bill.

The results of Bill's necropsy have come back and showed nothing significant and have given us no further clues as to why he died - maybe he was just old.  On the positive side there is the possibility that he mated with Cyndy this summer and is a father again to some of her three chicks - watch this space.

In order to determine the sex of chicks we send the blood vessels from the eggs after they hatch to our genetics wizz Bruce.  We have just got the results back for "Mokopuna" and "Toitoiiti" - they are both girls, which is fantastic news.

We have about another 10 days left of chick rearing on Codfish Island before all the chicks and most of our staff head of to a less remote location to grow into sub-adults, before they return to the island late in winter when they are big enough to look after themselves.

Also on our agenda this week is a trip to Anchor Island to check on the birds over there who have been out of the limelight for a few months.  We plan to bring a handful of good boomers back to Codfish to bolster booming for next year as some of the boys here will still be a bit tired from this seasons efforts.  Some of the non-boomers from Codfish are heading to Anchor at the same time to make room for the new arrivals.